I was listening to Mitch Albom’s radio show last evening. One of his topics was whether or not Slope Style and the Half Pipe Snowboarding events belong in the Olympics.
His take was that they don’t because they don’t meet his idea of the traditional sports handed up from a hundred years ago and that the Olympics are not the winter X-Games. Ironically, the mogul runs were on last night. Also, and I do agree in part here, he had a problem with the fact that most of the kids speak as though they took Fast Times at Ridgemont High just a little too seriously. The manner in which the kids choose to communicate, however unseemly, is not a solid reason to keep snowboarding out of the Olympics though. Sorry Mitch.
My two cents are the two sports absolutely belong. The two are excellent mixes of everything that is cool in figure skating, moguls and downhill skiing and ski jumping… The air. While snowboarding is not cross-country skiing or speed skating they are exceptionally exciting sports that pack an incredible entertainment value – without a doubt, both sports add to the games.
If that isn’t a strong enough case for snowboarding, dude, curling is an Olympic sport!
Now that said, for the purists, I certainly understand why they don’t appreciate the snowboarding sports, I’m just glad they lost.
Fit Recovery 
The modern olympics need the spice of new events. Things like moguls and snow boarding keep it fresh and new for younger and older audiences. Good point.
Agreed! The Slope style made for great family breakfast time reality TV for us on Sunday
I couldn’t agree more, Jim. The way I see it is times are changing…if we keep living in the past, we are going to miss out on so many amazing things.
I have worked on four Olympic Games and one of the biggest things I struggle with is judgements by armchair-every-four-year critics of what is and isn’t an Olympic sport. Baseball, softball, and modern pentathlon were all dropped. Yet we still have synchronized swimming, curling, and dressage. Track cycling got told to trim their events and we lost the 1km. And a sport like Squash can’t even get a look in. Yet what they are missing is that the Olympic motto is “citius, altius, fortius” (faster, higher, stronger) – yet the guys and girls in the X-Games sports get judged by the armchair critics as not true to the original intent of the ancient games. On that criteria you would throw out every sport other than Athletics and Wrestling. Oh wait, they wanted to drop wrestling…
That’s a great point and an oft overlooked view. Thanks brother.